Donnybrook

By Deane Barker • • tags: slang, irish •
Updates
This content has been updated 1 time since it was first published. The last update happened .

Definition: a fight

Donnybrook was a town in Ireland (now a district of Dublin) which was home to the Donnybrook Fair. That event became legendary for alcohol consumption and subsequent fist fights.

Why I Looked It Up

In Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked, it says that Ronald Reagan wrote in his dairy about getting into a “donny brook” (he used the space, which I think is incorrect) with Tip O’Neill about Social Security policy, referring to a 45-minute yelling match they held during a White House meeting in 1982. Both Reagan and O’Neill were Irish, which might have encouraged the usage.

Update

Added on

This term has come up in Letterkenny a few times. That show is Canadian, but it’s set in a town named for the Irish town of Letterkenny and populated with Irish immigrant descendants.

Links from this – Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked July 19, 2021
Before he was a news show host, Chris Matthews was chief of staff to Tip O’Neill in the 1980s. During that period, Tip was the most prominent Democrat in the country as Speaker of the House, and he was the constant adversary to President Ronald Reagan. This book chronicles the six years from 1980...